Sky - Most Scots 'would vote against independence', new poll suggests
The spike in support, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on Sturgeons plan for a new referendum, for Indy2 has dropped. This poll however was taken before the UK government triggered Section 35 in response to Hollyrood passing the GRRB. It will be interesting to see how that will affect support, one would assume that since the two issues are of a similar nature you would get the same result but the GRRB is so controversial and does not divide down the usual political lines of left v right or Indy v Union there will be many on the Indy side that will be quite pleased about Sunak government's actions.
I feel that the response from the SNP government & their nationalist outriders in the media has been typically blown way out of proportion to suggest that the use of an S35 is some kind of assualt on democracy i feel is ludicrous.
First of all S35 is a legitimate part of the Scotland Act passed with a majority in our democratically elected parliament. I can't remember the SNP ever calling for or proposing a bill in Westminster for it removal.
Second the nature of the act, where a federal parliament can overrule a devolved one is common place in federal democracies. Canada for example has a system known as Paramountcy where if there is a conflict between provincial and federal laws, the federal law will prevail and the provincial law will be inoperative to the extent that it conflicts with the federal law.
In the United States the federal congress in D.C can pass laws that can limit or nulify laws passed by state legislatures. This came into particular prominence last year after SCOTUS repealed Roe vs Wade on the account that such issues should be decided by the states, however there was attempts by Democrats to pass a law in congress that would of codified Roe into law and limitted or completely stopped laws against abortion by red states. Something that i imagine that most SNP/YES supporters who decry the S35 order would support
Third, most SNP/YES voters want to take an independant Scotland into The EU, EU laws have supremacy over those passed by member states so if a similar conflict were to arise the EU law would win out. An Independant Scotland has a population of 5.4m, Slovakia a country with the same population has 13 MEPs, so if you add that to the existing 705 in the EU parliament & work it as a percentage then Scotland would have 1.8% of the representation, compare that to Westminster where Scotland has 9% (59/650).
In addition The EU operates on a principal of unanimous consent, it is entirely plausable that The EU parliamet could pass legislation that all Scotland's MEPs vote for, that the Scottish parliament votes in agreement with, that 26 of the other 27 member nations agree with but is vetoed by just one country which the Scottish people would have an absolute zero say in and doesn't go ahead. Seems a bit of a double standard.
Fourth and finally acts like S35 can be found within Scotland itself, living in Aberdeen I remember when Donald Trump was looking to build a course at Balmedie just 10 miles from my flat. The approval for its construction was a devloved matter for local governments. Aberdeenshire Council voted against the proposals much to Trumps displeasure, the Scottish Government which our current FM was Deputy of held a vote as to whether it should overturn the decision by the democratically elected council. How did it go ? Well i'll let this picture do the talking